It was only because he held one end of the litter that he did not obey his tormentors’ suggestions, and more than once he looked shudderingly, but almost wistfully, as they passed some gloomy-looking dells, where the newly-loosened brooks were rushing like mountain torrents or lying in deep, dark pools under the shadow of the oaks. Poor man! He sadly needed a comforter then, some one to tell him that now was the time to prove his belief in the creed that had been nominally his from childhood, to show him that the words, "I believe in the forgiveness of sins," were just as necessary to believe as the preceding, "I believe in God the Father." But, alas! for poor Dick. His creed was locked up, as well as his Bible, in an unknown tongue, and the God whom he had been taught to worship was one to be feared and dreaded, not reverenced and loved; a God whose vengeance must be turned aside by costly offerings and pilgrimages, whose highest favor could only be obtained by renouncing all pleasures and enduring all pains. "Cursed is every one that keepeth not all the words of the law to do them," taught the purest of the priesthood; they never declared: "God is merciful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." They could indeed gloss over the foulest crimes, and calling vices by the names of virtues, think they had changed their nature; but when an awakened spirit was aroused to a sense of its lost condition, and cried to the successors of the apostles for help, they could give the agonized soul no aid, no comfort, no hope. If penance and mortification and priestly absolution failed to satisfy the guilty spirit, it must perish, for Christ’s atonement was utterly rejected. *CHAPTER XIX.* _*From Darkness to Light.*_ When Geoffrey was roused from the bewilderment caused by this sudden change in his fortunes, his first thought was for Lady Katharine Hyde, who, when she visited them in her ghostly attire that night as she had promised, would wonder what had become of them. Bertrand reassured him, however, by telling him that Dick had almost completed the work of digging out the old underground passage to the convent vaults, and that by an hour’s work that night he could enter their late prison, meet Kate, and bring her forth to freedom. Even had the abbess not been so unexpectedly merciful their captivity need not have lasted over that night. "God has been very good to us, Bertrand," said the young Lollard, his pale cheek flushing with emotion, and his eyes by the light of the blazing fire showing full of tears; "for if we had come out that way, we should have had to escape immediately; but now we have a whole week for Hubert----" He stopped; he had meant to say, "for Hubert to get strong in;" but even his love could not thus deceive itself. His lips would not utter the words, but they both finished it for themselves: "That Hubert may die in peace."